This disclosure relates generally to a weapon training simulation system and more particularly to means providing the trainee with a (multi-layered) multi-target video display scene whose scenes have embedded therein trainee invisible target data.
Weapon training devices for small arms employing various types of target scene displays and weapon simulations accompanied by means for scoring target hits and displaying the results of various ones of the trainee actions that result in inaccurate shooting are well known in the arts. Some of these systems are interactive in that trainee success or failure in accomplishing specific training goals yields different feedback to the trainee and possibly different sequences of training exercises. In accomplishing simulations in the past, various means for simulating the target scene and the feedback necessarily associated with these scenes, have been employed.
Wilits, et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,804,325 employs a fixed target scene with moving simulated targets employing point sources on the individual targets. Similar arrangements are employed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,177,580 of Marshall, et al, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,943 of Ahola, et al. By contrast, the target trainers of Hendry, et al in U.S. Pat. No. 4,824,374; Marshall, et al in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,336,018 and 4,290,757; and Schroeder in U.S. Pat. No. 4,583,950 all use video target displays, the first three of which are projection displays. In the Hendry device, a separate projector projects the target image and an invisible infra-red an hot spot located on the target which is detected by a weapon mounted sensor. Both Marshall patents employ a similar principal and Schroeder employs a "light pen" mounted o the training weapon coupled to a computer for determining weapon orientation with respect to a video display at the time of weapon firing.
Each of these devices of the prior art, while useful, suffers from either or both of realism deficiencies or an inability to operate over the wide range of target-background contrast ratios encountered in real life while simultaneously providing high contrast signals to their aim sensors, and efforts to overcome these deficiencies have largely failed.